CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES

Psalm 14:1 "The fool has said in his heart,
there is no God"

All articles are written in the
NKJV, unless otherwise noted! All articles are written by David Hicks,
unless specified otherwise.

The Existence of God

The first thing a Christian must believe is in
the existence of God. If there is no God, there can be no word of God or no
Son of God. A godless religion is no religion at all. Many believe in God,
yet never take time to wonder why. Such faith is acceptable to God, but
might not be sufficient for an inquiring mind. To say we believe in God
because the Bible says that He is - is not enough proof, since we must also
have some reasons for believing the Bible. Therefore this lesson is a
listing of reasons, outside the Bible, which testify to the existence of the
Supreme Being.

The Argument from Cause and Effect.

It is a proven fact that for every effect
there must be a cause. We see a house, and then we know that someone must
have erected it. No house can erect itself, but someone must build it.
Likewise we see the universe, including the earth, sun, moon, stars, man,
animals, vegetation, and everything else. These things, too, demand a cause
for their existence. It is more logical to believe that the cause is a God
that created them, rather than believe that they just happen by accidental
change.

It is said that Benjamin Franklin, while in
Paris , made a model planetary system showing the earth and the planets
nearest it. Many astronomers copied it to use in their studies. One day an
atheist friend saw it and asked, “Who made it?” ”No one made it,” answered
Franklin , “It made itself, it just happened.” “What!” Cried the man,
“You're joking!” “And so is the man who says that the universe just
happened,” said Franklin.

(Who
made God? Every child I have ever taught in a Bible class has asked this
question. In truth, no one can answer it, save God. There are some things
beyond us. We cannot conceive of the beginning of time, or the end of time,
nor the boundaries of space. The world has been in existence always, or, it
was made out of nothing; one, or the other; yet we can conceive of neither.
This we do know: the highest of all things within reach of our thinking is
personality, mind, and intelligence. Where did it come from? Could inanimate
create Intelligence? In faith we accept, as the ultimate in our thinking, a
power higher than ourselves, God, in hope that some day, in the beyond, we
shall understand the mysteries of existence.

This coupled with the fact that He
which created all has revealed Himself in addition to what we know about
cause and effect. This additional information does not exist in an
accidental realm of existence.)

The Problem of the Origin of Life.

Life is on the earth. Though we can not see
it, yet we may see its work and realize its presence. We know that when life
leaves the body, that body dies. But where did life begin? We know that life
can only come from past life. The child receives life from his parents, who
received it from their parents, who received it from theirs, etc. Finally,
man had to receive life from some outside source. Since life cannot come
from dead matter, and since it did not come by accident, we conclude that it
must have originated with a living God who gave it to man and other living
things.

( In the Bible, creation refers both to
the act by which God created the universe and to the product of that
process . Rule vs. energy. One of the first patterns that draw our
attention in the creation narrative is the contrast between rule and energy,
order and exuberance, instantaneous creation and biological generation. In
this pattern God would bring order out of chaos. The emphasis in the
creation story as well as throughout the Bible is that God controls the
forces that seek to lead to termination rather than wholeness in the world.
)

The Design of the Universe Implies a Designer.

Just as we look at a watch , composed
of many small parts, with each part working perfectly, and agree that some
person must have designed it, so may we look at such things as the blade of
grass, the rose, the stars , and the human body, and say that surely
some designer must have made them all. That designer must have had
intelligence and ability to plan, as is seen from the perfect way in which
these things are arranged. Therefore the designer must have been God.

( In
the universe that God created, astronomers estimate that the Milky Way, the
Galaxy to which our earth and solar system belong, contains over
30,000,000,000 suns ( stars ), many of them immensely larger
than our sun, which is a million and a half times larger than the earth. The
Milky Way is shaped like a thin watch , its diameter from rim to rim
being 200,000 light-years” a light-year is the distance that light travels
in a year at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. And there are at least,
100,000 Galaxies like the Milky Way, some of them millions of light-years
apart. And all this may be only a tiny speck in what is beyond in the
infinite, endless stretch of space.

The mark of design and orderly arrangement
stamped on all creation within the universe is witness of a Designer; design
connotes intelligence; intelligence connotes personality; that infinite
personality is God. )

Evidence from the Pages of History.

In every age, and in every part of the world,
men have believed and worshipped some type of Supreme Being. The idea of God
is as old as man himself. How shall we account for this, except to say that
in the beginning God reveled Himself to man? In addition, we must credit our
Creator with our ability to recognize that we have been made in that image.
This system of recognition is at the heart of every form of worship.

(
Archaeological note: “The Bible represents the human race as starting with
the belief in ONE GOD, and that Polytheistic Idolatry was a later
development. This is directly contrary to the present day theory that the
idea of One God with a gradual development upward from Animism. The Bible
view has received recent confirmation from Archaeology. Dr. Stephen Langdon,
of Oxford University, has found that the earliest Babylonian inscriptions
suggest that man's first religion was a belief in One God, and from that
there was a rapid decline into Polytheism and Idolatry. (See Langdon's
“Semitic Mythology,” and “ Field Museum-Oxford University Expedition to Kish
,” by Henry Field, Leaflet 28).

Sir Flinders Petrie said that the Original
religion of Egypt was Monotheistic.

Sayce announced (1898) that he had discovered,
on three separate tablets in the British Museum , of the time of Hummurabi,
the words “Jahwe (Jehovah) is God.”

Leading anthropologists have recently
announced that among all primitive races there was a belief in One Supreme
God: ( See Dr. Schmidt's “Origin and growth of Religion –Facts and
Theories”). From “Halley's Bible Handbook, New Revised Edition, Pg. 62”.

Acts 17:24 -29 “God, who made the world and
everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in
temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men's
hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and
all things. 26
And He has made
from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,
and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their
dwellings, 27
so that they should
seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him,
though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move
and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are
also His offspring.' 29 Therefore, since we are the
offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold
or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising.”

A note from the Apostle Paul's great sermon in
the Areopagus of Athens , which recognizes the instincts we have received
from the creator .)

Evidence from the Conscience of Man.

The fact that man has some conception of right
and wrong, some sense of duty and a guilty conscience when he fails to do
what he believes to be right is some evidence of a moral governor of the
universe. Unlike the animals, man alone has this sense of duty and morality.
If there is no God we are at a loss to account for this characteristic. But
when we accept the righteousness of God as a moral law, it is perfectly
clear.

( Let
each one list all his physical needs, desires, and appetites, even those
that may become depraved, degenerating into base lusts. There is not one to
be imagined that cannot be satisfied in the physical world. Think, carefully
before leaving this point; can you imagine a need, a desire, a hunger, a
thirst or any physical craving that cannot be gratified in the physical
world? You cannot!

However, there is something in a man which the
physical world, with all its provisions, does not satisfy. Consider the man
who continues to accumulate material possessions after the necessary demands
of life have been acquired. It is an inborn desire which forces us to
continue to seek satisfaction. Some attempt to fill this desire with the
physical; some with philosophy, others with branches of science or
metaphysics. However, neither material things nor philosophical theories can
gratify the desire of which we speak. It rises above all of these and leaves
a gap unfilled, questions unanswered, and the spiritual hunger unsatisfied
. It originates in the image
we were created in. That which was created, seeks out naturally the very
nature implanted within. )

Evidence from the Existence of Man upon the
Earth.

The fact that man, with all his complex parts,
exists upon the earth is evidence of the fact that God is, for if there is
no God, how else can we account for man's existence? To resort to the theory
of evolution from lower animals is no answer, for this theory has been
exposed time and again. This point is well expressed by W.L. Oliphant in the
Oliphant - Smith debate in the following words: “Something can not come from
nothing; but something is; therefore something always was. Thinking beings
exist, but thinking beings could not come from unthinking being; therefore
thinking beings have always existed. Now I ask my opponent to tell us what
this eternal;, rational, or thinking being is. We say God. What alternative
does my opponent offer?”

(Let this point be illustrated by simply
considering any book, the Bible itself for example. It is made up of
combinations of twenty-six letters of the alphabet. But suppose that each of
these alphabetical letters should be cut out by itself, then the whole
scattered about a large room, a fan turned on, and the letters allowed to
arrange themselves by chance. How long would it require these thousands of
letters finally to arrange themselves over the floor into their present
arrangement as they occur in the Bible? Can one imagine such an arrangement
ever taking place?)

Artistry and Craftsmanship.

One result of believing that God created the
universe is that the visible world is regarded not simply as a set of data
but as someone's achievement. This accounts for the images of artistry and
craftsmanship with which biblical writers portray creation. One can scarcely
talk about Genesis one, with its elaborate symmetry and ritualistic
pattering, without thinking in artistic terms. God first creates three
settings and then, in the same order, fills them with appropriate agents.

The overall effect is that of an artist
filling a canvas. However, the favorite image of Biblical writers in this
regard is that of building and architecture. The sheer solidity and
permanence of the earth leads to the metaphor of God's laying foundations
for the earth. Creation is a building with a cornerstone. An atmosphere of
careful planning, functional soundness, and aesthetic harmony.

________________________________________________________________

These are a few of the most
outstanding reasons why any rational and right thinking individual
should believe in God. Now, let us turn to the problem that the atheist
faces. The following are a few of his great problems:

I.
To say there is no God is to assume full knowledge of everything, for the
one thing, if there is anything we do not know, might be the fact that God
is!

II.
To say that there is no God is to say that the universe is an accident and
“just happened”. This is a greater miracle than God. Which is the most
reasonable answer, God or an accident?

III.
To say that there is no God is to be forced to account for the idea of God;
the origin of life, design of the universe, conscience of man, man's
worshipping instinct, and the fact that man exists. The atheist is unable to
give an intelligent explanation of any of these things.

IV.
In the mind of the unbeliever there must always be the possibility that God
is and that he is mistaken. What could make man more miserable?

Psalm
14:1

“To the Chief Musician. A
Psalm of David.

The fool has said in his
heart, "There is no God."
They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is none who does
good.”